ALONG CAME A COOKIE.....

This is the story of how the crew of the TrainStar get to meet up with one of the most unusual characters that have emerged from the SuperTrain/TrainStar stories. The character's name is Cookie, and he was a friend of Alexander's, many years ago. This is how the people of the TrainStar got to meet with it.

Once upon a time, in the galaxy where the TrainStar was, Lemy and Rascal were hoping to return to earth. They talked to Alexander about it, and he was comfortable with the idea of visiting planet earth where all his old friends and enemies were.

SuperTrain however, was a little puzzled because there were strange markings on the radar screen.

"Looks like we have something strange on the screens," said ST. "Might be aliens…"

"Those aren't aliens," replied Lemy. "That's strawberry jam that I spilled on the monitor screen."

ST was mad with Lemy but knew that the lemur was always doing strange things like this. It must have been jam and toast while Lemy was on duty the last night.

"Next time, be more careful," said Alexander.
"Let's consider going back to earth….I received a special message the other day, from an old friend of mine."

As the TrainStar made its way back to earth, everyone was excited.

"Just think about all the fresh eggs we'll get to eat once we're back on earth," said Rascal, licking his lips.

"For some strange reason," said Lemy "I feel like having something else….that is egg-based. Like waffles or pancakes or even cookies."

Within minutes of landing on earth, all the foxes who were not on duty, zoomed out quickly for they had missed earth quite a bit. Lemy and Rascal were left in the TrainStar, to program the droids who would guard the TrainStar.

Just then, a huge round and brown thing rolled past them.

"Excuse me," said the round thing. "Can you tell me where Alexander can be found?"

"Oh, he's up on the 11th floor," said Rascal immediately.

The round thing thanked them and rolled off.

"Hmmm..." said Lemy "Did we just talk to a cookie?"

"A COOKIE!!!" they both shouted out loud. "Let's get it…we've got to save Alexander before he's rolled over by the giant mean old cookie!"
The stripy pair rushed to the lifts and headed up, weapons drawn. They were ready to defend Alexander, and were desperately trying to reach ST.

As the lift doors opened to the 11th floor, they were surprised to see that Alexander and that cookie-thing were having a pleasant chat, and Alexander was pouring out some tea for the cookie.

"This is all so confusing," said Lemy "What is Alexander doing, talking to a biscuit??"

"That's not an ordinary biscuit," said a familiar voice. It was SuperTrain. "That, is an old friend of Alexander's and it's name is 'cookie' believe it or not."

"Well, said Rascal, "At least his name's not biscuit"

But Lemy was not listening to his friend. He was thinking about a happy cookie-meal, and was already thinking of ways to get that cookie for breakfast. Especially if he could cover it in eggs and fry it!

Lemy began to hatch a plan, and whispered to Rascal about it.

Soon, Alexander heard a knock on his door.

"Who is it?" he asked

"Cookie Inspectors!" came the reply.

"Take That!!" said Alexander as he unleashed a powerful zap right through the door.

"Yeowch!" came the response from the other side of the door, followed by the sound of something scurrying away.

Alexander laughed to himself, for he knew that Lemy and Rascal were up to their old tricks again. Cookie, his friend, continued to chat with him.

A few minutes later, there was another knock on the door.

"Who is it?" asked Alexander, in the first of many question-and-reply sessions.

"Friendly droids?"
"Maintenance crew"
"Macdonald's"
"The big bad wolf"

Each reply was met with a stinging thunderbolt and the sound of scurrying feet.
The lemur and raccoon just didn't know when to give up.

After a while, Alexander decided to let them in anyway and introduced them to his friend - Cookie.

He told Lemy and Rascal that Cookie was an old friend, and that he was inedible anyway so that they could stop trying to eat the living biscuit. SuperTrain was also familiar with Cookie and he later told the stripy pair that Alexander had done a few missions with Cookie, who was in an experiment that somehow caused it to come "alive".

The experiment was a test conducted by secret scientists who wanted to find out if hard food like cookies could survive being hit by radiation, like in a nuclear attack. While most of the other cookie bits crumbled to pieces, this one particular cookie did not get destroyed but instead came alive and grew to larger size, with the strength of an elephant. It could also talk and had intelligence far greater than one would suspect for a cookie. When the cookie started broadcasting its position and made a call for help, it was Alexander who responded and broke into the secret lab to rescue the baked mystery. Not knowing what to call itself, the cookie was therefore just simply called - COOKIE.

Lemy was not very convinced because he still thought that cookies were edible and that both ST and Alexander were playing tricks on him. But Rascal was pretty convinced that he was seeing something great in this talking cookie and because he knew that Lemy had a similar experience.

After everyone had settled down for a bit, they asked Cookie why he was here. Cookie replied that he was now on a quest to find more living cookies and that he wanted to try and live on the TrainStar. He had perfected a method of bring cookies to life and he wanted to test it out in space so that hit would have no problems.

The next night when Alexander was watching the news, he heard a broadcast that stripy-tailed tings were suspected of breaking into Supermarkets and stealing cookies. So far, the thieves had broken into 3 areas and made off with hundreds of packets of cookies.

"Lemy! Rascal!" called Alexander. "To my office at once."

"What happened?" they asked as they strolled casually into his office whistling a cheerful tune. "Whatever it was, we didn't do it."

"I just heard over the radio that you two have been breaking into supermarkets and stealing cookies." scolded Alexander. "Why are you doing this?"

Just then, SuperTrain walked in with a huge bag of cookies.

"Where do you want to put these?" he asked Lemy and Rascal

"SuperTrain! You too?" said Alexander in a shocked voice.

SuperTrain explained that he and the other two were on a special mission to get as many cookies as they could from all the shops so that Cookie could build up a new family or army of cookies that would all be living.

Alexander then picked up a newspaper and said "So, this is what you three have been doing? You should pay for the cookies you take, and not just steal them!"

"But, I was just driving the van - I didn't know they weren't buying the cookies but stealing them instead," said SuperTrain.

"That's no excuse," said Alexander. "How else would they be able to afford the cookies?"

"Anyway," said Lemy and Rascal. "Nobody knows we belong to the TrainStar and if you like, we will use real money next time in order to buy the cookies."

Alexander accepted this and no more was said about the theft. In the meantime, Cookie was busy building up the equipment that would one-day transform the hundreds of cookies into real living beings - just like him.

The next thing Alexander discovered was that the orange crystals that they had in the TrainStar, were practically all gone.

"How can this be?" he said to himself.

He realized that Lemy and Rascal were selling the crystals in order to get money to buy the cookies. So, he disguised himself as a gem buyer, tracked down Lemy and Rascal and then bought every last crystal that they were selling. After that, he revealed himself to them and told them not to take from the TrainStar either.

Alexander gave them two hundred dollars and told them not to get anymore cookies after this as they had already got so many hundreds of them.

So, the stripy pair went out and bought thousands of eggs instead.

Lemy and Rascal told Alexander that they couldn't buy anymore cookies because they had already taken every single cookie that was around.

Ranger then informed Alexander that something had to be done about the cookie situation.

"What cookie situation?" asked Alexander.

Ranger explained that every bit of the TrainStar was not overflowing with cookies. They did a quick examination of the place and realized that this was true - the whole TrainStar looked like a cookie supermarket.

"I know, " said Alexander. "Take all the cookies and build a new ship - we'll call it the CookieStar and it will follow us wherever we go.

And so, that was how the CookieStar came to be. And Cookie was able to find the right combination of nuclear beams that would force the cookies to come alive. Soon, he had lots of cookies that became his grand army, and he was able to assist SuperTrain and Alexander in the missions that followed.

The CookieStar was an exact duplicate of the TrainStar except that it was flatter and smaller than the main ship.

Lemy and Rascal were very interested to see the CookieStar and thought about building one of their own craft some time in the future - they would call it the LemyRascalStar or the RascalLemyStar or the StripyStar or whatever.

Anyway, they would get the opportunity to do so some time in the next episode, but that is another story.

Copyright notice: Lemy & Rascal are part of the SuperTrain collection of stories, and the property of Alexander Choong & Aloysius Choong. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Email:lemy_rascal for further information. Copyright - 1998 Cookie Tales